My Selection — Unaccustomed Earth
Story collection by Jhumpa Lahiri
When Unaccustomed Earth, a story collection by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri was about to be published, Isaac Chotiner of Atlantic magazine interviewed her. He asked 18 questions. Just four of them were about the themes of Unaccustomed Earth, and three of those were about marriage.
Lahiri does have a lot to say about marriage and family, especially immigrant families and their children. But I was struck by her beautiful renderings of the appeal of solitude, and of quiet, absorbing work. Some of Lahiri’s characters, whether married, single, or widowed, cherish their time alone.
In this excerpt from the story, “A Choice of Accommodations,” Amit, a married man, talks about his time away from his wife Megan and daughter Monika:
“Wasn’t it since Monika’s birth that so much of his and Megan’s energy was devoted not to doing things together but devising ways so that each could have some time alone, she taking the girls so that he could go running in the park on her days off, or vice versa, so that she could browse in a bookstore or get her nails done? And wasn’t it terrible, how much he looked forward to those moments, so much so that sometimes even a ride by himself on the subway was the best part of the day? Wasn’t it terrible that after all…
